At UVM, receipts were down by 25 percent in 2012, bequests were up by more than $15 million

Feb. 25, 2013

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

The figures are in for colleges’ fundraising campaigns over the year that ended June 30, and the results for three local schools are mixed — decidedly so for the University of Vermont.

Following a record year, UVM’s total receipts for fiscal year 2012 dropped 25 percent, according to the UVM Foundation’s 2012 annual report — from a high of $29,069,047 collected as of June 30, 2011, to $21,728,314 in the most recent year.

That compares to an average increase of 2.3 percent for charitable contributions to colleges and universities nationwide in fiscal year 2012, according a survey by the Council for Aid to Education released last week.

The offsetting good news for UVM was that new bequests in fiscal year 2012 were up — way up. Total new bequests — money that donors pledged to leave to UVM in their wills — was $22,405,354, up from $5,273,245 the previous year. Why?

“The jump in new bequests is not anything we have a lot of control over,” wrote Jay Goyette, spokesman for the UVM Foundation, in an email. “Strictly driven by donor preferences year to year.”

UVM’s total receipts for fiscal year 2012 of $21,728,314 were the lowest since 1999, when $21,711,925 came in. (Total receipts are the sum of new gifts, payments on pledges and realized requests.) Goyette said the decrease last year was attributable to “a combination of factors.”

“The weak general economy had an impact,” Goyette wrote. “But also, we had an unusually high realized bequests total in FY ’11 — $9,777,103 vs. $1,130,985 in FY 12. And a third factor was the fact that our last campaign ended 6/30/2007, and many of those large gifts were multi-year pledges (payable over up to 5 years), so the payments on prior-year pledges have been declining as those pledges are honored.”

Early in fiscal year 2012, Dan Fogel stepped down from the UVM presidency amid a rash of publicity that prompted inquiries by the board of trustees and public criticism of his post-presidential compensation. Goyette was asked if that episode had an impact on contributions.

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“We have no evidence to suggest a link between the end of President Fogel’s tenure and the dip in FY12 receipts,” Goyette wrote.

St. Michael’s College also reported a surge in bequests. The total raised — $4,612,544 in fiscal year ’12 — was 57 percent more than the previous year. Realized bequests were a big part of the increase according to Patrick Gallivan, St. Michael’s vice president for institutional advancement.

Middlebury College raised $42.4 million in fiscal year 2012, a drop of about 2 percent from the previous year’s $43.2 million. The figures include new gifts and realized bequests, according to Sarah Ray, college spokeswoman.

“Overall, Middlebury is extremely fortunate to have strong support from generous alumni,” Ray said in an email. “We expect small fluctuations from year to year, and we’re pleased with our fundraising results.”

On track to raise $500 million

At UVM, most of the reported bequest money for 2012 was not in hand — “realized bequests” amounted to about $1.1 million — but the unrealized bequests still count in the UVM Foundation’s run-up to announcing a goal for its comprehensive campaign. Together with cash receipts, bequests result in a figure for “total production,” $45,067,395, that puts UVM ahead of schedule to reach a target of $500 million by 2019.

UVM’s last comprehensive campaign began in 2001 and exceeded the goal of $250 million ahead of schedule in 2007. In May 2011, the Board of Trustees approved a resolution authorizing an “advance phase” of a new campaign, after a consultant recommended an “internal working goal” of $500 million to be raised by 2019. Responsibility for overseeing the campaign fell to the UVM Foundation when it officially began operating on Jan. 1, 2012.

No goal has been publicly set for the new UVM campaign. Typically, college fundraisers hold off on announcing formal goals until fundraising campaigns are well along and the targets are in sight.

The UVM Foundation expects to set the campaign’s goal by the fall of 2015, according to Goyette.

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A working assumption of the consultant, Kathleen Kavanagh of Grenzebach Glier and Associates, was that the goal would be $500 million over eight years, through June 30, 2019. To reach $500 million, Kavanagh’s projections called for UVM to raise $37.1 million in fiscal year 2012 and to raise increasing amounts each year after that, up to $95.8 million in fiscal year 2019. Those figures include cash receipts, pledges and bequests, so the foundation’s “total production” for fiscal year 2012 was above the threshold for that first year.

“(A)t this point, we do believe a goal in the $500 million range is realistic,” Goyette said in an email last week, “especially if we can maintain the trajectory we’re currently on.”

Kavanagh’s report on “Campaign Planning Issues” was presented to trustees at their May 2011 meeting. For the report and the research that went into it, UVM paid a fee of $162,650 plus expenses, Goyette told the Free Press that month. The cost was underwritten by discretionary private gifts, he said.

When UVM President Tom Sullivan met with the Free Press editorial board in August 2012, about a month after he took office, he was asked if he thought a goal of $500 million would be a reasonable expectation for the next campaign.